We’ll never be a playground for puppets

07 Aug, 2022 - 00:08 0 Views
We’ll never be a playground for puppets

The Sunday Mail

When Bishop Lazarus was in primary school, which seems to be a lifetime ago, there was this big, bad, mean, insufferable bastard that had mastered the art of making everyone’s life, both teachers and learners, a living hell.

If you believe in the theory of evolution, well, this brute was arguably an evolutionary specie — probably a homo habilis —that was trapped in a time capsule who believed in the primitive axiom that whoever could wield the biggest stick or throw the biggest stone was unquestionably superior and supreme.

To put it in much simpler terms, he was a bully.

At a time when enrolment into primary school was not particularly strict age-wise in order to accommodate hordes of underprivileged blacks who had failed to go to school mainly because of the war, it was not uncommon to find classrooms in which these hulking men stuck out like a sore thumb in the midst of scrawny and tiny kids such as the Bishop.

Not that this chap had been anywhere near the war — such an undisciplined ruffian couldn’t have gone through the crucible of the liberation struggle — but he had developed the notorious habit of absenting himself from school and was always endlessly repeating.

He never sat for the final exams.

Had he concentrated on his studies, schooling would not have been the dreadful experience it was for some of us.

Despite our parents’ best intentions, carrying food to school was not advisable as this sadistic creature almost always confiscated it either to have it for himself or simply throw it away just to humiliate the weaklings.

And, of course, there were beatings which were randomly dished out to anyone and everyone for no apparent reason.

What made it worse is that there was no recourse, as teachers and other school authorities were scared stiff of this caveman.

He was that intimidating.

With the overbearing pride of a peacock, he would haughtily move around with a puffed chest and the logs he had for arms mechanically flailing about him as a Japanese sumo wrestler.

To him, school was his personal fiefdom.

Daily, our bully usually picked on this young chap who had a relatively muscular physique, probably as a calculated deterrence to his would-be challengers.

It all changed on one wintry morning.

On this fateful day, our serial victim came in a very grumpy and foul mood for reasons best known to himself.

This irritated his daily tormentor who, obviously feeling he held exclusive rights to his victim’s misery, decided to rough him up for good measure, which was a mistake.

The bully was forcefully shoved away and in no time the confrontation had escalated into an unexpected David and Goliath bout.

In what came as a surprising revelation, the underdog could duck, nimbly dart sideways and throw ferocious punches.

In the twinkling of an eye, the overrated bully, who now had a bloodied nose, could no longer take any more punishment, as his rubbery and jelly knees gave in, prompting him to fall backwards like a log.

The thud was almost earth-shattering.

Keenly aware of the humiliation that would follow such a hiding, he tried to wobble his way up to salvage the fight, but unfortunately met another combination of lightning-speed jabs that were topped by a monster uppercut, which sent our bully plunging headlong in slow-motion.

Never mind the Bishop’s abhorrence of violence, the spectacle of the school tormentor knocked out cold and sprawling on the dusty classroom floor was satisfying to behold.

When he eventually came to, he embarrassingly and hurriedly left, promising to come back and exact revenge.

Well, as fate would have it, that was the last time we saw him and first time we tasted true freedom.

In our culture, they often say embarrassment is too dishonourable and heavy a burden to bear than death.

Vaulting interests

You see, nothing is as satisfying as a bully getting their just deserts.

This is why the world watched in glee when Taliban fighters, clad in nothing more than traditional dresses, turbans and sandals, triumphantly strode into Kabul in August last year and dislodged the puppet regime of President Ashraf Ghani.

Even after investing US$2,3 trillion over a 20-year period to maintain a foothold in Afghanistan, in the end, the US army, armed to the teeth with sophisticated equipment and weapons, had to beat a hasty retreat with tails firmly between their legs.

In 1975, the world also watched in amusement as the US scrambled to get out of Saigon, Vietnam, as the Viet Cong closed in on another US-backed puppet regime in South Vietnam.

In recent times, another puppet in Eastern Europe, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, who was foolishly prodded by NATO into provoking Russia through actively seeking to join the US-cobbled military alliance, is slowly watching his motherland being turned into rubble and waste by superior Russian firepower.

And the world, which is currently smarting from the economic fallout from the ongoing conflict, couldn’t care less about Zelensky’s possible fate.

A Zoom call he tried to have with African leaders on June 20 was only attended by four unfortunate souls — Senegalese President Macky Sall, who, as AU chairperson, didn’t really have a choice; Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara; Republic of the Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso; and Mohamed al-Menfi, another puppet installed by the West as leader of the Libyan Presidential Council in the face of a civil war that has engulfed the oil-producing country ever since the 2011 NATO-engineered assassination of Muammar Gaddafi.

Last week, Washington was up to its bullying mischief again when congressional speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in a move that was interpreted by China, which claims the island is part of its territory, as a “strategic-level provocation”.

The calculated move brought the world on the brink of yet another conflict that we can all do without.

Provoking and trapping China into conflict with Taiwan, which as Ukraine is similarly getting weapons from the US, would not only help America to distract its people from the cost-of-living crisis back home, but hopefully degrade China’s rising global power and influence.

The reason why the US stirs up trouble around the world through salami-slicing tactics of dividing people, stoking conflict, destabilising and sabotaging perceived adversaries is mainly to promote its self-serving parochial and exploitative hegemonic influence, accessing or looting raw materials and buttressing a unipolar world in which it is the only superpower.

This is why China and Russia are in its crosshairs. A multipolar world that provides an alternative voice, market, ideology, culture, value system and worldview is inconceivable for Washington, as it will gradually undercut its power and influence.

In an interview with Fox Channel’s Steve Hilton in May 2019, ex-US President Donald Trump told us as much.

“Our economy has been fantastic. Because they were catching us, they were going to be bigger than us.

“If Hillary Clinton became president, China would have been a much bigger economy than us by the end of her term. And now it’s not even going to be close,” he said then, adding he would do anything to ensure China doesn’t become the world’s superpower under his watch.

A year earlier, in 2018, economists at HSBC Holdings Plc — a British multinational financial services company — had ominously predicted that China was on course to be the world’s biggest economy by 2030.

The Asian country’s Gross Domestic Product would stand at US$26 trillion in 2030, it forecasted, while US GDP would rise to US$25,2 trillion.

America is already on the decline.

The signs are everywhere: From the cold reception Joe Biden recently got from Saudi Arabia and the snub that Pelosi got from South Korea’s president Yoon Suk-yeol last week ostensibly because he was on holiday. Kikikiki.

Good over evil

Luke 6:43-45 helps us to tell good from evil. It says: “For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush.

“A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”

Powerful!

And Matthew 5:9 advises us that “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Bishop Lazi, therefore, asks: If peacemakers will be called children of God, then what will warmongers be called?

Whose children are they?

Here in our small teapot-shaped Republic, which has been swatted by the heavy hand of the bully for the past 22 years through unilateral sanctions, we know who the warmongers are because we live with their children.

Earlier, the Bishop told you how Zelensky attempts to address AU leaders only attracted four Heads of State — well, in fact, three if we do not count the illegitimate leader of Libya — some of who simply participated out of duty.

Well, in a bizarre stunt diametrically opposed to the collective conscience of more than one billion Africans, Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine, Tendai Biti (CCC), Zitto Kabwe (Tanzania) and Greg Mills (a proxy of the Oppenheimers) jointly wrote an article on July 27 advising that “African democrats must close ranks in defence of Ukraine”. Kikikiki.

“To ally with Russia is to side with authoritarianism and against human rights and international law, and places those who do on the wrong side of morality and history . . . In fact, Moscow seems to be pathologically wired to ignore reality and rather construct a ‘narrative’ that explains its actions.

“It is adept at conjuring a fake reality and some African leaders are adept at buying it . . . Our message to Europe is clear: Don’t fund our oppressors,” they said.

Well, just before the ink on their shameless opinion article had dried, the usually pro-Western Amnesty International published a report vindicating Russia’s claims that Ukraine’s army was dishonourably using civilians as human shields as they were setting up bases in hospitals, schools and residential areas, among other civilian areas.

How embarrassing!

So, who sired Bobi Wine, Tendai Biti, Zitto Kabwe and Greg Mills?

Are they children of warmongers or peacemakers?

Well, here we spent close to a decade-and-a-half fighting — probably longest war against colonialism in Africa — against a much stronger bully and triumphed in 1980 through the selfless sacrifice of cadres we commemorate this week, and we are prepared to defend every square inch of our territory through the invisible man and women, including uniformed forces we honour this week as well.

This is not a playground for puppets — Morrison Nyati, the patriot saints of puppets and sellouts, could have testified.

We are a people of consequence.

Bishop out!

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